|
||||||
|
||||||
|
 |
 |
Back to VSLive! Orlando Show Daily Home
Whidbey Details Exposed
VSLive! Orlando, September 10, 2003
VSLive! Orlando 2003 offered another chance to peek at what's coming in future versions of Visual Studio. The .NET Focus Day at VSLive! exposed more details of the Whidbey release and, more importantly, started to uncover the trajectory of the Microsoft languages. .NET needs to evolve at a rapid but consistent pace. .NET 1.0 reminds me of rock-climbing metaphors where the learning curve is like a steep face. Microsoft might have worked hard to attach handholds, but it didn't change the steepness. Such hurdles are bad for developers. But is it possible to improve the tools and language without these jumps? Unfolding details indicate that Whidbey will meet this challenge. One tiny feature that demonstrates how Whidbey builds on today's features: the arrows for placing tool windows. Tool windows are great, but placing them is difficult. Rather than making big changes, Microsoft added graphics that indicate how the window will dock as you move it around. Look for this feature in demonstrations. Whidbey will include many small but important features like this to improve your productivity. Another example I can hardly wait to get my hands on is the snap align that makes it easy to lay out your Windows.Forms screens. Whidbey goes on to plug holes in .NET; for instance, it's providing XML documentation for Visual Basic developers. Another big hole in 1.0 for Visual Basic developers is the lack of edit-and-continue, which returns in Whidbey. Some of these features are enhanced; E&C offers suggestions for fixes at run time. New .NET language features are likely to get a lot of attention in the coming months. Features such as generics are important and will make your Visual Basic or C# code faster and more robust. Watch for a myriad of little features that will combine to make the Whidbey development experience more productive. About the Author |
|
||||||||||||
